The Encyclopedia of Country Living
Selected Book Details
- Paperback
- Edition: 10th
- Author: Carla Emery
- Publisher: Sasquatch Books
- Release Date: July 2008
- ISBN-10: 1570615535
- ISBN-13: 9781570615535
- List Price: $29.95
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Summaries and Customer Reviews provided by Amazon
SummaryFor twenty years people have relied on these hundreds of recipes, instructions, and morsels of invaluable practical advice on all aspects of growing and preparing food. This definitive classic on food, gardening, and self-sufficient living is a complete resource for living off the land with over 800 pages of collected wisdom from country maven, Carla Emery--how to cultivate a garden, buy land, bake bread, raise farm animals, make sausage, milk a goat, grow herbs, churn butter, catch a pig, make soap, work with bees and more. Encyclopedia of Country Living is so basic, so thorough, so reliable, it deserves a place in every home--whether in the country, the city, or somewhere in between. |
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Invaluable
Rating:
I have a very early version of this wonderful book. I gave my daughter and son-in-law a copy to take to Africa with them as they embark on a one year mission trip. They were thrilled with all the information!
A Labor of Love
Rating:
The Encyclopedia of Country Living by Carla Emery, A Review, by Sher June
This book is phenomenal! Besides offering general information on
gardening and variations on the usual ways to prepare and preserve
produce, Carla Emery includes thousands of other exotic and old
fashioned recipes. That alone would be remarkable, but she doesn't stop
there. She covers information on every aspect of farming and
homesteading from buying a farm to delivering your own baby---yes, if you
are all alone when you go into labor!
Here is a general idea of what she includes, as well as some of the
weirder specifics:
How to get water - dowsing, getting it to your farm, using it, pollution
concerns
Living primitively - shelter, backwoods refrigeration, campfire kitchens
Alternative energy - information and resources, using a solar cooker (We
have one, and they really do work.)
Washing clothes by hand
Quilting
Candle making - paraffin and beeswax
Foraging - also poisonous plants and mushrooms
Wood - harvesting, heating, wood cook stoves
Fertilizing your soil
Raising earthworms for gardening, bait, or money making
Using draft horses and oxen
Grain (all kinds!) - planting; mowing by hand; binding sheaves and making
shocks to cure them;
threshing by hand, with animals, or machinery; winnowing; drying;
storing; grinding; and protecting from pests
Preserving food - canning, freezing, drying, salting, larding, fermenting,
jams and juices, making vinegar
Saving seeds for next year plants
Herbs - culinary, not medicinal
Pressing oil from seeds
Acorns - making meal and flour
Bamboo - growing, recipes, and various other uses
Wild Rice - foraging and growing your own
Flax - growing and making linen
Maple sugaring - collecting sap and making syrup
Dandelion root or chicory coffee
Beekeeping - keeping bees, harvesting and using wax and honey
Animals
Raising, feeding, and caring for all types of livestock
Building barns, fences, chicken coops, rabbit hutches, etc.
Pastures, forage, hay, feeds
Predator control
Diseases and veterinary care
Reproduction from breeding to births
Dehorning, castrating, hoof trimming
Sheep shearing and using wool
Pigs - housing, fencing, and how to catch a pig!
Rabbit raising
Poultry - chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese, guineas; hatching chicks;
preserving eggs and testing them for safety; using feathers
Dairying - milking and milk handling; all types of dairy products; cream
separators and butter churns
Butchering - preserving meat; making sausage, soap, and lard; tanning
hides; making pickled pig feet!
Home funerals and burying your dead
In March 1974 Carla Emery self-published the first edition of what she then called "The Old Fashioned Recipe Book." It made the "Guinness Book of World Records" as the largest book ever printed on a mimeograph machine. It was well over 900 pages, hand bound, and some of the early ones were held together with plastic coated copper wire through a 3-hole punch. We were lucky to get one of the early mimeographed editions before she sold it in 1977 to Bantam Books, who continued to publish until 1988. Sasquatch Books began republishing it in 1992 under the current title, "The Encyclopedia of Country Living," and continues to publish it today.
Carla's recipes and homesteading information came largely from her personal experience farming, which she did while raising 6 children and running the School for Country Living for a while in Kendrick, Idaho with her husband Mike. She also
gleaned much information for the book from elderly farming friends and neighbors who still possessed these basic skills and favorite old recipes. Once Carla started publishing her mimeographed editions, she quickly became famous enough to be interviewed on major national TV talk shows, etc., and folks started sending her even more homesteading tips and recipes. So her book kept expanding until it weighed several pounds and looks today like a big city phone directory!
I have been referring to Carla's book for over 30 years on many topics for our own farm, and found it very helpful. I particularly used her recipes on preparing and preserving food. My own 30 year area of expertise is in keeping dairy goats. I found her goat information quite useful and accurate, although I did disagree with her on a couple of points, which isn't unusual with any
book on animal raising. For instance, she says any doe who has trouble giving birth twice should be butchered. Goat birthing problems are almost always tangled or backwards kids, which you can usually help deliver, and are just bad luck. Also she recommended a wormer that is outdated, because worms do become immune to these products after a number of years in general use.
There are useful resources throughout the book for further reference or purchasing products. These include books, periodicals, government agencies, and organizations.
This book is surely unique. I have never seen anything remotely as useful, thorough, and inclusive as this homesteading reference. It was a labor of love.
- from [...]
Good, Very Good
Rating:
This book covers a lot. The most practical information on 'homesteading' you will probably find anywhere and almost certainly the best for the price.
A Lifetime Of Home Spun Facts, Humor, Lore, And Love
Rating:
I bought the new and updated Encyclopedia of Country Living, (ECL) by Carla Emery about a year ago at a local book store. This book simply put is a total outline of just about every aspect of country living that one could possibly surmise. Whether it is a recipe for dandelion wine, or the basics of a home made out house you are in the need for, or just curious about, you will find it talked about here in depth. Everything in it, every article, subject, paragraph, is written in a comfy, home spun style where Miss Emery forever assumes you are in no big hurry. The knowledge and lore almost requires that before she even gets started, a pot of coffee must be made, and some old fashioned "jawin" has to be the opener first on the front porch. Lest one think that any part of this wonderful book is boring, quite the contrary, it is like you have adopted a wise and wonderful virtual grandmother ready to help you discover, make the best, or just instruct you as to her inherited wit and wisdom and then leave you on your own, if you so choose. Somebody that you can neither get enough of, or manage to be away from or forget. And the only folks that will be put off, and consider this wonderful cracker barrel approach to be excessive and boring, are those people that are destined to never be called the folks back home at all, but are far more addicted in life to forever tightening the reins of those interlacing their butts.
This book really is an encyclopedia. It is not meant to be curled up with and just read from cover to cover. (Although admittedly it is that very thing I am attempting). It's more of a book you pick up whenever you feel its either time you slowed down and smelled the proverbial coffee, or just feel like reading about old time country living that may stay just outside our reach in life, but want to experience the flavor of all the same, in the only way we can. ECL is not just a wealth of humor, wisdom, and lore about all facets of country living, but it is also a genuine bargain as well. Its like finding a farm stand that sells the best tomato's, onions, peppers, and corn you ever tasted for a fraction that the stale supermarket charges for it. It's my personal belief that if this book were to become mandatory in every home, it would evolve into the best remedy for loneliness and depression ever discovered.
I highly recommend this fine book for anyone that is either a doer, or a dreamer. You will find yourself picking it up and rediscovering it for years and years to come. Absolutely superb...
Encyclopedia of County Living
Rating:
Thanks for this book. It is filled with great information and was in very good condition.
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